Schwab Cup leaving SF in 2012

The Schwab Cup Championship, the season-ending event on the Champions Tour scheduled to be played at Harding Park again next month, will leave San Francisco in 2012, The Chronicle has learned.

Champions Tour officials will announce later today an agreement to move the tournament to the Cochise Course at the Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. The event will be held Nov. 1-4, 2012.

The news comes at time when the PGA Tour (which runs the Champions Tour) is holding talks with San Francisco officials about future events at Harding Park. The city’s contract with the tour calls for two more marquee PGA Tour events at Harding in the coming years, including the “penultimate playoff event” — the BMW Championship — in 2013 or ’14.

But tour officials boxed themselves into a corner, given similar obligations to hold that tournament outside Chicago (its traditional home) in 2013 and near Denver in 2014 (at Cherry Hills). The tour and city are talking about ways to reshape their deal, possibly pushing back the higher-profile PGA Tour events and instead bringing more Schwab Cups to Harding.

John Cook reacts to a missed putt during last year's Schwab Cup at Harding Park.

The deal with Desert Mountain apparently covers only one year, leaving open the possibility of the Schwab Cup returning to San Francisco in 2013 or ’14. This year’s tournament is scheduled for Nov. 3-6. The event was previously held in Sonoma, before moving to Harding last year.

John Cook won last year’s tournament, with Bernhard Langer taking the season points title.